The Public Intellectual

In Stephen Mack’s blog entitled “The Wicked Paradox: The Cleric as Public Intellectual” he sets forth the idea that those with religious training were the original public intellectuals. Classifying a public intellectual by means of the example of a religious leader, while it makes sense, still is problematic for me because I am unsure what it is about a religious leader that makes them qualified to occasionally fall into the category of public intellectual. For me the larger problem is that I do not know what a public intellectual is. “Public” is an adjective that has quite a few definitions. One is being exposed to general view. Another is of or relating to people in general. Another is accessible to or shared by all members of the community. “Intellectual” means developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience, rational. It also means given to study, reflection, and speculation. Individually I understand what each of these words means; the second I use them together as the phrase “public intellectual” the dictionary definitions are meaningless and I become confused. I have a suspicion that public intellectuals are practically of no importance to our society today but before understanding what a public intellectual does or where their place is in society it is first critical to investigate what a public intellectual is.


When a person is private or keeps their ideas private they do not share themselves or their thoughts with others. When a person is public there are many levels that a person can be “public” on. First there is the level of discussing ideas and thoughts with at least one other person. This action would make ideas no longer private, hence, public. Sharing your thoughts with another human being is clearly not enough to make someone public when used as a part of the phrase “public intellectual”.


Next a person can share ideas and thoughts with group of peers who have similar credentials and thoughts. A handful of people will then have been exposed to one persons ideas and those ideas can even be discussed among this group but one persons peers or social networks does still not reach far enough to be considered public. Even if a person publishes a book or article about their ideas, but that book only has a very small circulation among the authors peers, it still is not enough to be considered.


I don’t think that there is a magical number of people that have to be reached or a requirement such as being available at Borders to make one person a public figure. There is some sort of measure though. Oprah is clearly public, so are the president of the United States, the members of the Rolling Stones and the Dali Lama. If you mentioned their names around the country more than a small fraction of the population would know who that person is at the very least.


A person can not be considered public if they are not known on a larger scale than their hometown or high school. They not only need to be well known but they need to be easily accessible to the general population for the purposes of the definition for the “public intellectual”. If these two requirements are not met than for me, a person is clearly not public.


Next is an understanding of the work intellectual. How does a person receive the distinction of being known as an intellectual and who makes those decisions. If formal education was the only indicator of an intellectual than it would be easy to determine who was intellectual. If a person completed a course of study with the necessary grades in their courses to achieve a certain degree and the institution deemed that they had satisfactorily completes their studies they would be considered intellectual. This raises two more problematic issues though. First, is there a certain level of education needed to be considered an intellectual? Is a bachelor’s degree sufficient or is something more required such as a masters of doctorate. The next question that comes into question is the credibility of the institution itself. A person is less likely to be considered an intellectual with a degree from a poorly ranked or incredible institution but degrees from Harvard and Yale may not be necessary either. There is clearly middle ground but the middle ground is often gray and fuzzy and more difficult to determine one way or the other.


If education is clearly not the precise indicator of intellectualism position and training may be more indicative. Intellectualism is required to hold a respected position and to be admired by peers in similar positions. Even a sparkling resume though has its issues. In class we discussed Ann Coulter and her classification by some as a public intellectual based on her credentials as a lawyer and member of a federal judges staff. She is respected by some, but is despised by others because of her clear and unbending bias toward the right end of the ideological spectrum.


If her lack of ability to see past ideology makes her classification as an intellectual problematic then clearly objectiveness is a requirement to be an intellectual. For me then an intellectual is a person who has had some form of legitimate training, whether from an academic institution or from another sort of legitimate training who also possesses the ability to use a factual based objective method to come to their conclusions.


Joining the two definitions to understand the phrase public intellectual still has its own set of issues. Simply joined, my definition of a public intellectual is a person who is widely known and accessible who has been well trained and can think objectively. The next question is what does a public intellectual think objectively about and why should it matter? A public intellectual clearly needs to consider things that are of importance to the general population. The question then becomes what does it mean to be relevant. There are many people in the general population who are unaware of some of the most relevant things facing the world and our country right now. During the Tonight Show with Jay Leno there is a segment where Mr. Leno takes to the streets to ask people walking by on the street question regarding popular news stories. These people often are unaware of the most critical issues such as who are the front-runners in the Democratic Primary.


This example shows that the “people” are largely incapable of deciding what is relevant to them so the burden of deciding what is relevant then falls onto the intellectuals. Theoretically, the intellectuals should not be deciding what to inform the public about but as much as I disagree with them making the decisions, I would hate to see what would happen if the answer was left in the hands of the “people”.


Public Intellectuals are clearly many things to many people and fill many functions. Theoretically they offer wonderful services to the world that are of great importance but currently are a part of a catch 22. Using the world as an example is too large and complicated so for my purposes I will use the example of the United States. As shown above we live in a country where, despite of the nauseating level of media attention and tiring length of the campaigns, there are a significant number of people who cannot even tell you one candidate. We also live in a country where some do know even the most basic details of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied. NYTIMES


There are also those who do not even know the first three words to the preamble of the Constitution. It is not an obscure document, it is the piece of paper that our country was founded on and that still governs our country. If these are the types of citizens that live in the United States, who do not even care to learn some of the most basic and important facts about our country why would they be interested in taking the time to read a essay by a brilliant member of academia with information they have no interest in and maybe have never heard of.


For public intellectuals and intelligent people everywhere it is truly a catch 22. The people in this country who are not interested in anything of significance are the ones who need to be informed by public intellectuals the most, but they are also the least likely to be interested in reading the work of public intellectuals. In actuality public intellectuals have become obsolete.


When looking at the need for public intellectuals on the scale of the entire world it becomes even more apparent. There are a large number of underdeveloped and war torn countries and it is obvious that any person who does not even know if they will be alive tomorrow will find no use for important academic material.


It is sad to admit that the general population will for the most part ignore intelligent and well-learned members of our society. They have devoted there live to attaining knowledge and probably want to help the country and world move in the right direction, but it may never even help. I can only hope that those who make decisions, such as world leaders, will pay attention to the work of public intellectuals for everyone’s sake.